Month: September 2005

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Service Pack 2 was released yesterday. It contains various stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP2 have been previously released as separate updates, but the service pack combines them into one update that has been regression tested and safe for production use. The service pack includes updates previously released for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0: Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Service Pack 1 Security Update for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0: KB887981 You can download Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Service Pack 2 here Known issues during the installation of the service pack When you try to install Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2 on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems, you receive an error message. For more information about this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 906896 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906896/ ) You receive a "Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 cannot be installed because this server is not running a Microsoft Windows 2003 or later operating system" error message when you try to install Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 In a Web farm deployment of Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, you must upgrade all the Web servers in the Web farm. For more information about this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:...

Orchestration or Workflow? This question often comes up when talking about the new Windows Workflow Foundation. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF or, Workflow) is Microsoft’s technology platform for building workflow-enabled applications. The platform includes a set of tools for designing and managing workflows, a programming model for implementing workflow logic, a rules engine, and a workflow runtime execution engine. BizTalk Orchestration Services represents a new way to approach designing, deploying, and maintaining distributed business processes. BizTalk Orchestration Services are used to design business processes that manage the overall business logic. BizTalk Server lets you orchestrate your business processes by combining a run-time engine with a design-time tool called BizTalk Orchestration Designer. Using BizTalk Orchestration Designer, you visually coordinate all of your business-to-business orchestrations on screen in a Microsoft® Visio® graphical interface. BizTalk Server then saves your workflow in an executable file called an XLANG schedule, which a run-time engine uses to execute your business processes. A good explanation of the difference can be found at Lamont Harrington’s post here: Windows Workflow Foundation vs BizTalk Server Ultimately, when making the decision between these two approaches, the best thing to do is look at your system borders. Windows Workflow is a great choice when you need to stay within the boundaries of an application, Biztalk is great when you need to cross application/system boundaries. It is why BizTalk always wins out when...